R. Jagger: A Way With Murder

Bristol Design Group.

She took a deep breath, opened the door and stepped in. The reception desk was cluttered with papers but had no human inhabitant in the chair. Waverly stood in front of it and waited.

A minute passed, then another.

Lots of men scurried around plus an occasional woman but no one paid her any attention.

Then a man appeared from her left and handed her a ten-dollar bill. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Run down to Murphy’s and get me an Italian sausage with everything, plus an RC and a bag of chips.”

He was in his mid-thirties and wore it well, in a rough, manly way.

His eyes were wolfen-blue.

He reminded her of a Marlboro billboard.

She looked down to see if he was wearing a ring. He wasn’t, but his pinky finger was missing. She had a strange urge to touch the stub.

He must have seen the expression on her face because he said, “It got shot off. If you’re temping for more than just today, I’ll tell you about it some time. Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Temping tomorrow too?”

She shrugged.

“I’m not sure yet.”

Then she noticed something.

His shirt was buttoned wrong.

She unbuttoned the top button, re-buttoned it in the proper hole and said, “Just follow my lead the rest of the way down.”

He smiled.

“I can’t believe nobody told me.”

She shoved the tenin her purse and headed for the elevator. Over her shoulder she heard, “Hey, what’s your name?”

“Waverly Paige.”

He was Sean.

Sean Waterfield.

He was happy to meet her.

Day One

July 21, 1952

Monday Afternoon

River didn’t wantto kill the bikers but that changed when the first knife swished past his head. They tried to surround him but he darted this way and that, forever elusive, leading them deeper and deeper into the terrain. They got more desperate, trying to get him in the middle. River bided his time and waited for his move.

Then it came.

One of the guys tripped over a rock and went down. River kicked him in the face, wrestled the knife away and stabbed it with full force into the side of the asshole’s head.

The woman screamed and charged.

River backed up as if escaping then suddenly closed the gap with a leap forward and punched her in the face.

She went down, bloody, and curled into a ball.

Now there was one, the one with the chain, the big one.

“You’re going to die, asshole,” he said.

River pointed his index finger at the man and then moved it in a come-here motion.

“Come on and do it,” he said.

The man charged and swung the chain with so much strength that River didn’t dare grab it. He skirted it and got his footing.

The woman was getting to her feet.

“Stay down!” River said.

Her face was covered in blood.

The only clean part was the whites of her eyes.

She didn’t stay down.

She couldn’t.

She was insane with rage and charged.

River grabbed her, wrapped his arm around her neck and held her in front of him-a human shield. “Put the chain down and I’ll let her go,” he said. “We’ll finish it fist to fist.”

The chain didn’t drop.

The man didn’t move.

“Do it!” River said. “Do it or I’ll snap her neck!”

“Screw you and screw her!”

He charged and swung the chain.

River dropped and forced the woman with him. The chain passed over their heads. Before the man could get it cocked again River got a hand on his arm and swung him to the ground.

A punch landed on his face with the force of a rock.

He tried to shake it off before another one came.

It didn’t work.

A second one landed, so hard that the inside of River’s head exploded in colors.

Then a third landed.

He was dying.

A few more and he’d be dead.

He made a desperate move to close the gap and get the man in a bear hug.

It worked.

The fists kept pounding but they were more on his back than his head and weren’t full force. River kept the man locked in position until the explosions in his head softened, then he wrapped his arm around the man’s neck.

At that second, they locked eyes.

The man made a desperate move, trying to twist.

It partially worked but not enough to get away.

River rolled and jerked with all his might.

The man’s neck snapped, then he twitched for a few seconds and stopped moving.

River rolledonto his stomach and closed his eyes.

The darkness felt like water.

Cool, cool water.

Blood was in his mouth.

The taste was strange but not necessarily bad.

He didn’t mind it.

He’d earned it.

He sat upto see how far away from the road they were, which he guessed to be fifty or sixty or seventy steps, it was hard to tell. It was close enough that someone driving past could have seen the fight if they’d looked in this direction. They might have been able to tell that one of the fighters had long hair.

He didn’t remember hearing any cars during the fight.

That was good but not conclusive.

Obviously he wasn’t focused on the road.

Right now, in any event, there were no cars around. If someone had looked over they didn’t bother to hang around.

The biker woman was still on the ground, watching him with fearful eyes.

River walked over, extended his hand and helped her up.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, and headed for the road.

She fell into step.

Then she stopped and said, “Wait a minute.”

She went back to the closest man, pulled a wallet out of his pants pocket and stuck it in hers. Then she did the same with the other one, the one with the chain. She hovered over him for a second, narrowed her eyes and then dropped a mouthful of spit onto his face.

“Okay,” she said.

Day One

July 21, 1952

Monday Afternoon

Wilde silently backed outof the woman’s bedroom when her thrashing and moaning got sufficiently loud, then he tiptoed down the stairs, ducked out the door and was gone.

Back at his office, he drank coffee and had a smoke.

He still needed to talk to her.

Should he head over now and knock on the door?

He pictured it.

No, she was too fresh in his mind.

He wouldn’t be able to look her in the eyes.

So now what?

He struck a match and watched the smoke snake up. The sulfur smelled like sex and was just as addicting. He lit the whole book on fire and stared at the flames. They were always the same. They were predictable.

Secret St. Rain.

Who was she behind those haunting eyes?

Suddenly the door opened and a woman walked in.

It wasn’t Secret.

It wasn’t Alabama.

It was someone Wilde didn’t know.

Their eyes locked and in that brief moment, Wilde’s life got complicated.

If Secret was yin,this woman was yang. She was just as hypnotic but in a contrasting way. Her hair was black, her skin was sun-kissed gold, her eyes were mysterious and her lips were made for one thing and one thing only. She was older than Secret, somewhere around the twenty-seven mark, four years younger than Wilde.

A perfect age, actually.

She was conservatively dressed in a crisp white blouse and a black skirt that was tight but ended slightly below her knees. Her hair was up. She wore a simple gold necklace. An image flashed in Wilde’s brain of him ripping it off and licking her neck.

“I’m London Marshall,” she said. “I’m in trouble and I’m hoping you can help.”